


Mysteries of the Runes

by Nicholas de Pimpernelle (dePimpernelle)



Series: The Mysteries Of The Runes [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ancient Runes, Cursebreaking, INDEFINITE HIATUS, Meditation, Mentor!Bill, Norse Mythology - Freeform, Occlumency, mentor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-04
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-18 05:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5900161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dePimpernelle/pseuds/Nicholas%20de%20Pimpernelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry Potter arrives at the Burrow in the summer before his third year, the events in the Chamber of Secrets are all too fresh in his mind. He meets Bill, the eldest of Ron’s brothers, who offers to teach him all about Ancient Runes, and other mysterious subjects. A Mentor!Bill fic, AU from the beginning of POA onwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Meeting Bill

Harry Potter, newly turned thirteen-year-old Wizard and Hogwarts student approaching his third year, woke up to the sound of Ron Weasley’s snores filling the small room they shared at the Burrow. The noise would have annoyed most other people, given the sheer volume and variety of sounds that Ron was capable of producing, but Harry found it strangely comforting. Sleeping with the drone of his friend’s snores filling the air usually meant Hogwarts, which unlike almost every other place Harry had been was Home. Even though he knew he was at the Burrow, thanks to the strangeness of a different mattress, Ron’s snoring was a comfort in a strange new place.

 

Ron asleep was a much easier prospect to live with recently, what with conversation between the two of them being so stilted these days. The weight of the end of their last year at Hogwarts still pressed heavily upon their friendship, no matter how much they tried to ignore it and go on like normal. Harry had a feeling that the whole affair equal parts relieved and shamed Ron. Ron felt relief, because Ginny had been returned safe and sound, and ashamed that he hadn’t faced the basilisk with Harry, and was more than a little relieved to have not done so. Harry felt so much older than thirteen. He felt aged almost beyond belief, and found it hard to enjoy games like Wizard’s Chess, Exploding Snap, or Gobstones like he had before. Flying was the only thing that relaxed him now. In fact, Quidditch was one of the few things that bridged the gulf Harry could feel widening between himself and one of his best friends, and it didn’t help that Harry had almost finished his summer homework and Ron was still pretending that the summer would never end, that their return to Hogwarts was years away, and that Harry and his mother were mental for suggesting that he get it out of the way now.

 

He could only hope that things might return to normal once they were back at Hogwarts. The structure provided by the castle, their lessons, and even Gryffindor Tower might help bring things back to how they were. Harry had had few enough friends in his life to let one go so easily.

 

His eyes were closed as he reached out blindly to pick his glasses up, but he found them by touch with the ease of someone who has been wearing glasses for years. He put them on and sat up fully in the bed, turning so he could put his feet on the floor, feeling the chill of the floor through the thin rug that was the only barrier between him and the bare floorboards. Despite the early hour – the sun was only just above the horizon – Harry found himself wide-awake. He found he didn’t sleep all that much any more. It had been like this since the end of his last year at Hogwarts, where in the Chamber of Secrets he had stood against the terror of the basilisk and the spectre that controlled it. He hadn’t managed more than six hours of sleep a night since.

 

The sun was just rising, filling the highest bedroom at The Burrow with soft golden light, providing more than enough light to work by, so Harry headed to his school trunk to fetch the last of his summer homework, a quill and roll of parchment, and a small bottle of ink. This last bit of homework was an essay on Cheering Charms, so he went back to grab his Charms textbook, The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three. He grabbed a few of his bigger textbooks to use as an impromptu table to write on, as well as somewhere to put his inkbottle. He got himself settled atop the duvet and got work. Writing hunched over didn’t improve his penmanship much, though it didn’t exactly make it worse either. Either way it was definitely something that he needed to work on.

 

It was some time later that Ron began to move towards actually waking up, a process that involved a lot less snoring and a lot more rolling about in his bed, and was helped along by the smell of breakfast being cooked in the kitchen below wafting in through the window. Harry had finished the twenty-eight inches required by Professor Flitwick and had moved on to something more exciting. He’d picked up The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas in one of the little charity shops in Little Whinging before he’d left Privet Drive.

 

It was just approaching half seven now, so Harry headed down the worn stairs to the bathroom. Each step he took produced a squeak, and like everything else in the Burrow Harry had a deep affection for it. Petunia Dursley would never tolerate anything so imperfect as a squeaky stair, let alone a whole staircase full of them. The Burrow was nothing like his aunt and uncle’s house on Privet Drive, and he loved it for it. From the landing on the first floor he could hear the clanking of the pots and pans washing themselves in the kitchen, and hear the soft voice of Mrs. Weasley humming quietly to herself as she bustled about.

 

He stopped in the doorway, taking in the sight of all that white tile and suppressed a shudder. Since he'd left Hogwarts, bathrooms filled him with a sense of foreboding – especially bathrooms like that at the Weasley's. It was floor to ceiling white tile, and it was the gleaming white in front of him, coupled with the echo caused by the absence of soft furnishings led him back to the girl's toilet on the second floor at Hogwarts, and from there not far down the long pipe to the Chamber of Secrets. He felt on edge and twitchy in there, and the unsettled feeling was enough to make him hurry through his morning shower.

 

After the world’s quickest shower, and equally quick brushing of his teeth, he opened the door and bumped into Ginny. ‘Oh!’ he said, squeaking in surprise. ‘Morning, Ginny.’

 

‘Morning,’ she replied in a quiet voice. She was pale, her face drawn, and it made Harry frown. This wasn’t normal behaviour for Ginny, from what he knew of her. It wasn’t like he knew much of what she was really like, but he’d heard stories from Ron, Fred, and George. Could she be affected by the Chamber of Secrets as much as he was? He stopped on the stairs back up to Ron’s room and felt like he could kick himself – of course she was! Though Ginny had been unconscious for the fight with the basilisk, she had spent the majority of the past year possessed by the teenaged memory of Tom Riddle – in most ways a much worse experience than the one Harry had survived in rescuing her.

 

For Harry, it had been thirty minutes of terrified action, where he was he was absolutely sure that he was going to die, and Ginny along with him. On the other hand she had had to face a long year of her sanity being chipped away, her feeling toyed with, of being forced to do terrible things. Worse, she had been through all of that not being able to do anything but stand silent witness. He couldn’t imagine what it must have been like.

 

He peeked through the banister, looking at the closed door. He was torn, for though Harry desperately wanted to help Ginny, he didn’t know how much help he would be. Maybe time and the presence of her family would help her.

 

After getting changed he trotted down the stairs to the kitchen. His plan for the morning was to grab a small bite to eat, since it was so early, and then take a look at the land around the Burrow to see if he could see a route for a morning run. Events in the Chamber had shown Harry that he desperately needed to improve his general fitness; he’d been out of breath after just a few minutes of trying to avoid the basilisk. Quidditch was good exercise, for what it was, but playing Seeker could never be described as a proper workout.

 

‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Weasley, turning around as she heard him sidle into the kitchen. 'You're up early. The others won't be up for hours yet! Sit yourself down, Harry dear, and I'll fetch you some breakfast – you look far too thin!' she bustled away from the table towards the kitchen proper and started pointing her wand at various pots and pans and cupboards, muttering all the while about "those terrible Muggles". 'What can I get you, dear?'

 

‘Er, a sandwich?’ Harry said, quick to realise that if he didn’t specify something small Mrs. Weasley would fill him to the gills.

 

'Oh, that'll be nice. You won't have seen much more than the orchard when you were here before, if I know my Ron. Here you are, Harry dear.'

In true Mrs. Weasley style, she floated over a plate with four slices of bread on it, along with a little pot of butter and another plate loaded with sausages, bacon and slices of cheese. Harry looked agog at all the food floating towards him, sure that if he ate all that plus a "proper breakfast" later he'd explode. Unfortunately he knew from past experience that protesting was pointless; he wasn't leaving the table until he'd eaten it all. He started to assemble his sandwiches: bacon on the bottom, sausages sliced in half and layered and cheese on top. As he munched his way through he tuned back in to Mrs. Weasley's babble.

'–And goodness knows when Fred and George will be down. Those boys, so smart, I've always said, but will they apply themselves? Of course not! "Pranking's the future, mum!" and, "We want to open a shop, mum!" Goodness knows what I'll do if they don't get a decent number of O.W.L.s each. At least Percy is doing well – he's a shoe in for Head Boy, if there's any justice in this world, he studies so hard – and Bill, of course, who's home for a few weeks for meetings at Gringotts. It is nice to have him home. He should be home in a few hours, he said, he had to go in to schedule his Apprenticeship Review. Why the Goblins won't accept an owl is beyond me. Imagine that, a Journeyman Cursebreaker in the family at twenty-three!'

Harry's interest was piqued; Bill being at The Burrow was news to him. He knew Bill was a Cursebreaker for Gringotts, and from what Mrs. Weasley was saying it seemed he was a very good one. Ron had told him and Hermione stories of Cursebreakers – it sounded like a very exciting life, raiding ancient tombs and breaking the curses left on piles of treasure. He had also got the impression that Bill was the cool older brother, perhaps _the_ coolest older brother. Putting aside Ron’s hero worship, Harry knew that Bill didn't often make it back to England, and he hadn't been at The Burrow the year before. With a mental shrug he thanked Mrs. Weasley for the food and headed outside. He would meet Bill later, he supposed.

A look around the back garden of the Burrow told Harry that the Weasleys were very interested in privacy, as it was surrounded on all sides by tall, yet gnarled trees and on ground level fenced by a thick hedge. He shouldn't be surprised, he supposed, given that they were a magical family, and they took the International Statute of Secrecy very seriously. The grass looked like it could use mowing and weeding, and through a break in the trees he could see the path that lead up to the Weasley's orchard. There was a small paddock up there, which he knew well from endless games of Quidditch the summer before.

The paddock wasn’t his destination this morning, however. That was to be found around the front of the house, and the freedom of the countryside beyond it. He circled around the side of the house towards the front garden. It was much how he remembered it: the path up to the front door from the lane, with the garage that used to hold Mr. Weasley's Ford Anglia as well as all of what Mr. Weasley called his "Muggle Memorabilia", the broom shed beside it and, in turn, the chicken coop next to it. Clustered around the door of the broom shed – which looked like it might have been an outhouse in a previous life – were a number of rusted cauldrons, and around the front door itself a small army of extremely muddy wellington boots. Harry set out towards the lane and started walking in what he suspected was the direction of the village of Ottery St. Catchpole.

This part of Devon was to Harry very much what he had always imagined the English countryside to be while locked away in Little Whinging as a child. He'd been in the car as they drove through the countryside, of course, but he couldn’t help but notice just how different it was to walk through it. It was very different from suburban Surrey. In Primary School they had read _The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe_ by C. S. Lewis – something that the Dursleys had not been happy about – and Harry remembered being captivated by the idea of four children not so dissimilar in age from him leaving London for the safety of The Country. As he walked along the country lane, which was barely the width of a car and bordered on each side by tall hedges threaded with honeysuckle, he remembered that first train journey to the Hogwarts. He remembered behind the tentative joy of making a new friend in Ron and the looming worry of not fitting in at Hogwarts, was the realisation that he was following in the footsteps of Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.

Through low points in the hedges either side of the lane, and when there was any kind hill he could see what looked to him like endless fields. As he looked about at the countryside he felt something strange bubble up inside his chest. Harry tentatively identified that fragile, awkward feeling in his chest as _freedom_. Much of his life had been tethered to something; Privet Drive in the summers and Hogwarts for the rest of the year. Hogwarts was certainly a gilded cage of a nicer sort, and allowed Harry a much larger area to spread his wings compared to the housing estate immediately around Privet Drive. Being able to walk through the countryside by himself was a rare and precious experience.

As far as he could gather from overhearing the Weasleys talk, to get to Ottery St. Catchpole you turned right onto the lane, walked about ten minutes until you reached an odd-shaped T-junction and turned right towards the village. Sure enough, after around ten minutes of the blissful freedom of walking he reached the odd-shaped T-junction with the sign for Ottery St. Catchpole – after already walking past another oddly shaped T-junction that no one thought to mention – and followed the sign. It turned out the road the Weasleys called "the lane" was really Knightstone Road, and the road to the village Sidmouth Road. You learnt something new every day, he supposed.

Eventually he reached the village proper, though he had seen the bulk of the buildings against the horizon for about ten minutes as he'd approached. As he entered the village, he noted the houses and shops in front of him were arrayed around a crossroads. To the north was the impressive bulk of a church, built of grey stone with the look of a miniature cathedral. The houses and shops were a miss-match of different styles, very unlike what he remembered of the village of Hogsmeade. Harry's only exposure to anything that wasn't an enormous castle or drab suburbia was the glimpses he'd stolen of Hogsmeade as he had taken a carriage back to the station at the end of the school year.

Harry turned left and walked away from the church and the centre of the village. The road in front of him curved away to the southwest, and had a mix of shops and houses. In the distance he could see a bigger building with a large glass frontage, and as he got closer he could see it was a motorcycle dealership. From the street he could see that they sold a mix of motorcycles, both the more modern kind and those he understood to be of the more classic variety. Taking a closer look he could see both Kawasaki and Royal Enfield badges. Harry had, for the longest time had a recurring dream of riding a flying motorcycle, which had led to the predictable blow-up the one time he had mentioned it by accident, but standing in front of the shop the dream came vividly back to him. It was one of the classic kind, all shining exposed chrome, black metal, a comfortable looking leather seat and a sidecar.

Getting a motorcycle to fly would be a real accomplishment, he thought. Certainly Mr. Weasley’s Ford Anglia had been a work of art, and he wondered if he would ever be able to match it. Maybe he’d have his own motorcycle one day, and enchant it to fly, or a score of other things. He’d have to really buckle down with schoolwork though. Seeing the row of motorcycles in the shop and witnessing the casually magical life at the Burrow had opened his eyes – Spending summers at the Dursleys and the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery left him with no way to apply any of the things he'd learnt in his everyday world, so he'd not thought much about it before.

Regardless of what Harry ended up doing with his life, whether it was enchanting objects to fly or not, he had seen enough of the village to find an easy route for an early morning run.

* * *

 

There was a man sitting in the corner of the Weasley's front garden when Harry had returned from his walk. He had the distinctive Weasley hair, but longer than the rest of the Weasleys that Harry had met, mostly swept back from his head and gathered in a ponytail. He looked tall, reminding Harry of Ron, Percy and Mr. Weasley, but he couldn't be entirely sure given that the man was sitting on a bench tucked under the shade of one of the tall trees that bordered the house. The man was smoking a pipe, which was interesting. He'd not seen any wizards smoking before, either cigarettes or pipes. It billowed smoke about the stranger’s head in clouds of ever increasing size, until a gesture from his wand sucked the smoke away.

'Who are you, then?' greeted the man before Harry could awkwardly say hello. 'You're one of Ron or Ginny's friends from school, from the size of you. I'm Bill.' He held his hand out for Harry to shake. Bill had an easy confidence to him that Harry envied a little, and he spoke in a gruff way that all the same wasn’t aggressive or intimidating.

'I'm Harry, Harry Potter. I'm Ron's friend.'

Bill sat up all at once, spluttering pipe smoke from his nose in his surprise, though his gaze didn’t make the by now familiar swoop up to gawk at the scar on Harry’s forehead. The cloud of pipe smoke made Harry cough a little. It had a herbal fragrance to it that was unlike the smell that Harry associated with the pipe his aunt Marge smoked in the garden when she visited. Bill smiled in apology and put the pipe to one side, after using his wand to douse the bowl. 'Sorry about that, I picked the habit up in Egypt and I'm hiding it from mum, I think she'd go spare if she knew. Come on, sit down. I want to have a chat.' Harry must have had an intimidated look on his face as he sat next to him on the bench because Bill laughed and added, 'Not like that! It's nothing bad, I promise.'

Harry sat on the bench next to Bill, and the silence of the morning surrounded them again. He let it wash over him for a moment, listening to the passage of the breeze through the trees around them. ‘My uncle’s sister smokes a pipe, but yours actually smells nice.’ Now that he had something to compare it to, it seemed that his Aunt Marge smoked the roughest, foulest pipe tobacco on the market. It suited her, now he thought about it.

Bill looked down at his pipe, which was made from what looked like it might be ivory or bone, and was carved all over with lions. A fitting pipe for a Gryffindor. 'It's from Egypt, where I work for Gringotts as a Cursebreaker. They do something different to the tobacco leaves out that way. It's a nice smell, right? Good for keeping you sharp when you’re two steps away from triggering a face-rotting ward.'

Harry didn't really know what to say to that. He felt very awkward. Bill was An Adult, with an exciting job in foreign lands, and on top of that was just so _cool_. There was an awkward pause while Harry stared at his feet and Bill rubbed his thumb along his pipe. 'What did you want to talk to me about?'

Bill turned his head and fixed him with a searching look. 'I wanted to talk to you about what happened with Ginny at school,' he asked. 'Mum said something about the Chamber of Secrets.'

Harry felt the cold on the face and knew that he had turned ashen from the blood leaving his face. He had been hoping to never have to talk about the events under the school again. Bill, from the way his expression changed, understood exactly how Harry was feeling at the prospect of re-hashing it all over again. Dumbledore's office had been bad enough, talking about it now at the Weasley’s _home_ was even worse. He couldn’t do it.

'It was bad?' Asked Bill.

Harry nodded, looking away determinedly. 'There was a basilisk.'

Bill's eyebrows almost disappeared into his hairline at that. 'Shit,’ he said eloquently. ‘How big?'

Harry shrugged, still looking away. As much as he didn’t want to say it – felt like he couldn’t say it – the words bubbled up unbidden. 'Fifty to sixty feet. Dumbledore's phoenix took its eyes. I stabbed it through the mouth with Gryffindor's Sword. It bit me, but Fawkes cried on the wound,’ he said, speaking in short bursts. There. That was all the facts.

Bill let out a whistle and a muttered curse, before he turned to grip Harry's shoulder in a gesture meant to comfort and reassure. 'If anyone knows something about what you went through, it's me. You did well, Harry. The most important thing is that you got yourself and my sister out of there. You were scared, right? So scared you could barely stand?' Bill saw Harry nod, jerkily, 'I've been there.'

Harry turned to stare at Bill with wide eyes. To Harry, Bill exuded such a sense of solid dependability that Harry couldn't ever imagine him being that scared. 'Y-you have?'

'Sure,' said Bill, smiling at Harry comfortingly. 'My first run in the field cursebreaking was an exercise in terror. Things went arse over kettle fairly quick – swarms of flesh-eating scarab beetles and fifteen-foot mud-golems. We were lucky to get out of there alive. I was so rattled that I was nearly on the next portkey home, to tell the truth. It doesn't match up with taking on a sixty-foot basilisk with a _sword_ but then few things do.' Bill gave his shoulder another squeeze. 'I'll tell you the only thing that might help you: you didn't let the fear get to you, you made it out of there, and you saved my sister. I won't lie to you lad, something like this will stay with you forever, but when the next thing comes at you – and having heard some stories from Ron and the twins, something else probably will – you'll stand just a little easier. You won't be as scared, and that might save some people. Don't be ashamed of fear, Harry, it means you're human.'

Bill had guessed right. Harry had been so scared in the Chamber, because there was nothing so frightening as a sixty-foot giant snake determined to eat you. But worse than that had been Riddle, who had been so confident, so mocking in his confidence. He didn’t feel that he had been brave at all.

‘You were brave, Harry, ‘said Bill, correctly guessing his thoughts. ‘Never doubt that. Bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but going on regardless.’

Harry had some colour back in his cheeks now, and looked a little better. 'Erm, thanks Bill.'

Bill grinned at him. 'You're a good kid, Harry, I can tell. After what you did for Ginny, it's the least I can do.' He looked him in the eye and asked, 'how do you think she's handling it?'

'Not well.'

Bill nodded, 'Don't tell anyone, but it's the real reason I'm back in England. I could sort out the Journeyman Cursebreaker business from the regional headquarters in Egypt, but I'm worried about her.'

'Bill,' said Harry hesitantly, unsure how to really broach the subject. What had happened to Ginny was horrifying, and he didn’t know if he could put it into words properly. 'It wasn't just what happened the Chamber… Ginny had been writing in a cursed diary all year. She had–' he paused, 'she had put so much of herself into it that she ended up with a shade of Voldemort in her head. He was able to control her, and make her do things. It's worse than I think your parents know.'

To Bill's credit, he didn't flinch when Harry uttered the Dark Lord's name. 'What do you think we should do?' he asked.

Harry was a bit surprised that Bill was asking him, after all Ginny was his sister. ‘D'you think you could teach her some of the things you use while cursebreaking? It's all she would talk to me about last summer,’ he said, after giving it some thought. He continued in a rush, ‘and maybe me too? I've finished all my summer homework already and it does sound exciting and after the Chamber maybe more than a little useful and–‘

‘Hey, hey,’ said Bill, cutting him off with a chuckle. ‘I think it's a good idea, and I'd be happy to show you too. As I said, it's the least I could do.' Bill put his pipe away within the folds of his robes, and stood up. 'C'mon, it's probably breakfast soon, right? I'll have a think about how to broach the idea with Ginny.’


	2. Background Magic

After Harry and the various members of the Weasley family had finished breakfast, he was left alone. Everyone else had gone their separate ways after eating, and after a quick trip upstairs to fetch his battered second-hand copy of The Three Musketeers, Harry took advantage of the quiet to head outside and read in peace. He went looking for one of the more interesting looking trees that formed the border of the property, searching for one with just the right branch to read against. He found himself at a little bit of a loss at what to fill his days with, since Ron was effectively grounded until he’d finished his summer homework. Harry was a little surprised that he didn’t just knuckle under and get it finished, even if it wasn’t good work, just so that he could enjoy the last of his summer holiday. Ron had a mulish stubbornness to him, and the idea of sullying his precious school-free time with homework was Not On. As a result Ron was left sitting at the kitchen table long after everyone else had finished their food and gone their separate ways, sulkily pretending to work on a Potion essay under the exasperated eye of Mrs. Weasley.

The peace and quiet, with no demands to play a game of Quidditch, or Wizard’s Chess, would at least mean he could read his book in peace. If he finished it today it wouldn’t be a catastrophe, since he had a few more interesting looking paperbacks in his school trunk. Harry spent the next few hours lounging along a comfortable branch of one of the larger trees, slowly relaxing to the sound of birds, and the soft breeze ruffling the leaves around him. It was a quiet, perfectly peaceful moment. He spent the next few hours up his tree, enjoying his book in solitude. His imagination transported him to the seventeenth century, joining d’Artagnon and the other musketeers on their adventures in France and England. Morning turned to noon, and from there to the early afternoon, the passage of time marked only by the turning of pages.

He only became aware of how much time had passed when a soft cough drew him back to the present. Peering over the edge of a branch he saw the long face of Bill Weasley. Harry assumed that he was fresh from Diagon Alley, or perhaps Hogsmeade, since he was wearing a long robe over his shirt and trousers.

‘Mind if I come up?’ Unfortunately for Bill it was slightly more difficult for someone in his mid-twenties to climb a tree than a thirteen-year-old, but he made it. When his head was about level with Harry, he took out his want and transfigured part of the bough Harry sat upon into a wide seat large and sturdy enough for the both of them to sit comfortably. ‘What’re you reading?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ answered Harry, prevaricating in embarrassment. It was one thing to enjoy wholly a fantasy adventure, and quite another the share that with someone much older and cooler than yourself.’ Harry looked on with interest as Bill made himself comfortable, and tucked his wand up his sleeve. ‘How does the Ministry know when underage wizards do magic?’

Bill shifted on his seat. ‘You’ve heard about the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery? A bit of a mouthful, right.'

‘I got a letter from the Ministry when a house-elf dropped a cake on my relatives. It’s a long story,’ Harry added, seeing the odd look Bill was giving him.

‘The thing to remember is the title. Reasonable restriction. If you’re in a wizarding home then it’s the responsibility of the adults to enforce the Statute of Secrecy. That’s what the Decree is really all about, protecting the Statute. Something much harder to do when every muggleborn on their holidays is hexing anyone who’s ever bullied them for being different. That’s what the purebloods on the Wizengamot think, anyway. To the Ministry, restricting magic in muggle areas is reasonable. It cuts down on the work the Obliviator Squad has to do.’

Harry stared at Bill for a moment in disbelief. ‘What about Muggleborns? Won’t pureblood students at Hogwarts get an unfair advantage if they can practice during the summer?’ asked Harry. Thinking about it, some of the students in his first year had already known how to do simple spells, though at the time he hadn't noticed that they had all been purebloods.

Bill shrugged a bit in response. ‘It doesn’t make a huge difference in your first two years. Up ‘til your third year you’re just learning how to use your wand and getting a firm foundation in magical theory. Third year is where it gets interesting. That’s where you pick your electives, and start to learn the trickier magics. Choosing your electives is the first step towards picking what you want to do with the rest of your life.’

Harry winced a bit at that. In his first and second year he had been revelling in his unexpected freedom from the Dursleys. Schoolwork hadn’t seemed so important, while having friends for the first time only exacerbated the problem, especially when caught between Hermione wanting to do too much and Ron wanting to do too little. Maybe picking the same options as Ron – namely the easy ones – hadn’t been the best idea after all.

‘What electives did you pick?’ asked Bill curiously, breaking into Harry’s thoughts.

‘mumblemumble,’ mumbled Harry, suddenly embarrassed.

‘What?’

‘Care of Magical Creatures and Divination,’ he said more clearly.

‘Oh.’

‘I didn’t realise they were so important!’

‘Well,’ offered Bill, with far more patience than Harry thought he deserved, ‘what sort of thing did you want to do after Hogwarts? Any ideas?’

‘What kind of jobs are there? I thought we got career advice in our fifth year.’

‘Ah, but Harry, by then it’s far too late to change your electives if you suddenly decide you want to be, say, a Cursebreaker like me. And McGonagall holds her career advice sessions not long after Christmas, if I remember right. By that point you’re hard up against the O.W.L exams.’ Bill took in Harry’s face, suddenly slack with something akin to horror, and took pity on him, elaborating more loquaciously than was normal for him. ‘A lot of careers, especially those in the Ministry, require just the core five subjects; Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, and Defence. History isn’t counted since Binns has been a duffer of a teacher for a hundred years. Getting passing grades in those subjects will see you into a Ministry career with no problem.

‘Healing is the same as entrance to the Aurors; a minimum of five N.E.W.T.s, and nothing under Exceeds Expectations. The hardest, though, is a Cursebreaker. Seven N.E.W.T.s and nothing under Exceeds Expectations; Arithmancy; Ancient Runes; Potions; Herbology; Transfiguration; Charms; and Defence. All are critical for a Cursebreaker, because it’s an incredibly dangerous job with a high mortality rate. If you just want an easy time of exams, then Care of Magical Creatures and Divination are fine. If you want something more, then you should owl McGonagall about changing your electives. If nothing else you’ll have more options when it really is time to consider your career after Hogwarts. What do you think?’

Harry was silent, looking at nothing in particular as he thought things over. He’d not thought about it much at the time, not really understanding what Percy had been trying to tell him. He’d ended up picking the same as Ron out of lassitude. But now Bill had really opened up his eyes to the whole thing; just because he didn’t know what he wanted to do after Hogwarts now, didn’t mean that he couldn’t put himself in the best position to choose a career once he had a better idea of things later. ‘I think I need to owl McGonagall. Care of Magical Creatures, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy.’

‘Quidditch might make things a bit squashed, but I reckon you’ll be ok,’ opined Bill with a smile.

‘You don’t know Oliver Wood.’ Harry let out a sigh and relaxed, slouching a little. He sat bolt upright though, when the meaning behind Bill’s words at the beginning of their conversation finally sunk in. Turning his head to look at Bill with wide eyes he blurted, ‘The Weasleys are a pureblood family, Bill. Why don’t your parents let you all practice magic in the holidays?

Bill made a small noise of amusement, ‘Mum and dad know the law isn’t fair, so they don’t let us use magic in the holidays. We’re not enjoying an “unfair advantage” that way. Plus not letting us use magic for our chores instils a “good work ethic” and keeps us from “being lazy”’, he replied, making air quotes as he spoke. ‘Us Weasleys are all about fairness and hard work, you know.’

‘That’s almost Hufflepuffian,’ Harry said, grinning.

‘Shut it, you,’ replied Bill, giving Harry a light punch on the shoulder. ‘Us Weasleys have been Gryffindors forever.’

‘Oh of course,’ said Harry, ’the first Weasley crawled from the primordial soup, ripped the Sorting Hat from the hands of Godric himself and was duly declared a Gryffindor – proving that all was right with the universe.’

Bill snorted, making Harry raise his eyebrows. Primordial soup was a particularly muggle turn of phrase. ‘I have read some books you know, and took the Muggle Studies elective. I know about Darwin,' he explained. ‘Besides, have you met my dad?’

For some reason Harry hadn’t expected Bill to have an interest in Muggle things, or more realistically be accurate in his interest. Mr. Weasley’s enthusiasm for Muggles was only matched by his slapdash approach to spelling Muggle things, like calling escalators “escapators”. Suddenly shy, he took up his book and wordlessly offered Bill his book. Maybe it wasn’t so embarrassing after all.

‘ _The Three Musketeers_? What’s it about?’ asked Bill.

Before Harry could stop himself he’d started describing the adventures of a young man from Gascony, newly come to Paris in search of his fortune and service with the King’s Musketeers. He chattered on happily to Bill while they both watched the countryside through the branches of the tree and the Cursebreaker blew smoke rings. He had just got to the part where d’Artagnon prepared to duel Athos, Porthos and Aramis one after the other when he came back to himself with a start. ‘D’you want to borrow it? I finished it today,’ he said, blushing slightly.

‘Sure.’ Bill turned the cheap paperback over in his hands, and the pair of them fell into an easy silence.

‘Have you thought about – about what we were talking about earlier?’

Bill put the book down and turned his attention to the carvings on his pipe, something Harry was beginning to realise meant that Bill was feeling uncomfortable with the subject of the conversation. ‘I managed to corner her just after I got back from the Leaky Cauldron. She’s– well, she doesn’t seem herself.’

‘She seemed better at the leaving feast but – I think that was maybe just relief?’

‘You think it’ll help? I don’t know what to do otherwise.’

‘I don’t think anything will help but time,’ Harry said, in a moment of clarity, ‘but I think teaching her something that might help keep her a bit safer in the future will help.’

Bill looked up from his pipe and gave a firm nod. ‘I’ll have a go at putting something together tonight and let you know tomorrow.’

* * *

Harry awoke the next day lying in bed in the pre-dawn light. Moving quickly, he got up and changed into his exercise clothes – a second hand pair of football shorts and a t-shirt that actually fit him. They were just from a charity shop, but it was nice all the same. Hedwig’s perch was empty, his snowy owl out winging her way to Professor McGonagall with a request to change his electives.

As he sat at the big table in the kitchen, after mumbling a greeting to the few people in the kitchen that early, Bill used a subtle flick of his wand, barely removed his pocket to magic a folded piece of paper under the edge of his mug of tea. _Affirmative on the AR_ , it read, after he’d unfolded it surreptitiously under the table. _Have cleared it with D and G_. Given that it was just Harry, Bill, and Mrs. Weasley in the kitchen he didn’t think the subterfuge was necessary. Either way, he finished off his toast, put on his trainers and made his way outside.

Like the day before he circled the house as he approached the driveway and the lane beyond. A thought bubbled up as he broke into a jog down the country lane, _here we go_ , the thought went, _say hullo to the new you_ , making him snort. Harry’s amusement faded fast, as he was introduced to the futility of running somewhere slowly in the name of fitness. Despite Quidditch practice, Harry found he wasn’t the best at this jogging business. Looming in his mind though was the knowledge that nothing worth having came easy, and getting fit would definitely not be easy. As he jogged he found himself slipping into a sort of meditative state as he watched the countryside slide past, the sound of birds and the slap of his trainers against the road the only sound to be heard. Before he knew it the Devon countryside gave way to the village of Ottery St. Catchpole, and following his footsteps from the day before he turned left away from the church and made his way towards the motorcycle dealership, stopping at the corner shop on the way to buy a bottle of water. He still had some muggle change left.

Harry stood in silence gazing at the sleek machines. He wasn’t sure what it was about motorcycles that captured him so. Maybe it was how fast they look, or the shine of the chrome. He’d noticed a similar model to some of those tucked away in the Weasley’s garage as he’d left that morning, not quite filling the void left by the absence of the Ford Anglia, something that filled him with not a small amount of guilt when he noticed it. Harry was interrupted from his musings by the approach of the salesman.

‘Aren’t you a bit young to be thinking about buying one of those?’

‘Oh!’ said Harry, startled. He hadn’t noticed the salesman approach. ‘I’m just – er – looking. ‘ _Smooth, Harry_ , he thought. Whatever way you looked at it, the salesman was right, Harry looked far too far too young by far to own or ride a motorcycle in Muggle England. ‘I’ve seen a bike like this before somewhere,’ he said, pointing at one of the classic motorbikes. ‘What’re they called?’

Maybe it was something in Harry’s face that communicated just how interested he was, or maybe the salesman – whose nametag proclaimed him as Len – was just looking to fill a quiet morning, but he pointed at the row of five motorcycles Harry had been so closely examining. ‘Well son, these are all Triumph Bonnevilles. Those three on the right,’ he said, pointing at the slightly shinier, newer looking machines, ‘are Harris T140s, built under licence by Les Harris after the Triumph plant in Meriden closed. The ones to the left are more expensive ‘cause they’re original T140Vs, all original or mostly original parts.’ Seeing Harry’s confusion over why something older would cost more, Len explained, ‘They’re classic bikes, son. The reason the Harris models are cheaper is they use mostly foreign parts from foreign parts. Italy and Germany, mostly.’

Harry made a humming noise of agreement and pointed at one of what he now knew was a Triumph Bonneville T140V. ‘It was one of those, that I saw before. I think.’ Harry paused for a moment, before taking the plunge and embraced the freedom to question that came from being in a Dursley-less existence, ‘How do motorcycles work?’

You could see on Len the Salesman’s face that for one unthinking moment he was about to answer. To explain in unnecessary and tortuous detail the intricacies of the internal combustion engine, and how it was specifically adapted in motorcycles before wisdom kicked in and he advised, in a voice as dry as the Sahara, that Harry try the village library.

That sounded like a plan.

The jog back to the Burrow seemed to go much faster. Harry hadn’t had much time to spend in the tiny village library, which was a single mid-sized room attached to the church. Luckily they had a small section on motorcycle engines, and he devoured what he could with hungry eyes. Tomorrow, he decided, he’d take a notebook with him and take as many notes as he could. He couldn’t borrow books, since he wasn’t from the village, but the old lady that ran the library wouldn’t mind him take notes at one of the little tables. Harry figured that it was a good idea to learn all he could about the mechanics of motorcycles. After all, if you were going to “improve” something Muggle with magic then you needed to know how it worked. Maybe, if Mr. Weasley was amenable, he’d be able to get a look at the Bonneville in his shed – and get Mr. Weasley to explain enchanting muggle engines in a bit more detail.

After a lunch of a frankly scary amount of carrot and coriander soup – three servings delivered to his placemat under the stern and watchful eye of Mrs. Weasley – Harry was able to escape to what he was swiftly thinking of as his Reading Tree, a new paperback in hand. It was Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig it was called, which seemed interesting to him just going by the title.

Harry had only read one chapter of his new book before Bill appeared beneath his tree, Ginny in tow, and with a silent nod of his head, indicate that Harry should follow him up the hill towards the orchard.

* * *

The trees at the border of the Weasley’s orchard grew strong and tall, helped along by nurturing spells laid down over the centuries. They grew tall enough, and the evergreens grew so thickly together that they could play Quidditch all year ‘round. Harry, Ginny, and Bill were sitting in a quiet corner, at a low table transfigured from a fallen branch. Bill had provided both Harry and Ginny with small muggle notebooks of lined paper, and a pencil to take notes with each.

‘I told you I’d teach you some of what I know as a Cursebreaker for Gringotts,’ said Bill. He was lounging on the grass a bit back from the table, not having to worry about taking notes. ‘That begins with Ancient Runes. Rune-magic is _old_ , and the people that lived in those times believed that being buried with important or valuable possessions when they died meant they could use them in the afterlife. They protected their tombs with powerful magic, often based in runes, and as a Cursebreaker it’s my job to break through those protections to get at the loot the Goblins want so badly. Neither of you have taken Ancient Runes yet, so I thought I’d start with how Hogwarts teaches it. From there I reckon we’ll move onto my favourite rune set, the Futhorc.’

Hogwarts covers the Germanic runic languages – the Elder Futhark and it’s successor languages – in detail, since they are so closely bound with our history. In your first year of study, you’ll cover basic rune definitions, and practice writing them accurately before you move on to basic rune carving. Hogwarts covers Etruscan, and Egyptian, Mayan, and Aztec, but that’s all something you cover in later years. Here’s the first question I have for you: why do we use wands?’

Harry didn’t know how to answer that, not really. Professor Flitwick had gone on about the importance of wand movements and incantations during their first few weeks of school, but he had also seen that for more experienced practitioners they were superfluous. When Mrs. Weasley made the breakfast, she didn’t stand in place, rattling off incantations at speed and waving her wand like the conductor of an orchestra; each task was begun and completed with nothing more than a simple flick of the wand. The question of why they used wands wasn’t something he thought much about. It wasn’t something he had put much thought into, when wands were simply a constant in his life now.

‘Wands are a focus for our magic.’

‘Right in one, Ginny. Just how mum taught us,’ said Bill with a smile. ‘The answer is indeed that they are a focus for our magic. Wands are excellent focuses; elegant tools capable of helping their owner create exquisitely intricate magic. What mum didn’t tell us is that in Britain we haven’t always used them. Wands are a relatively modern innovation for us. Sometime around a century before the Founding of Hogwarts – so about the ninth century – the use of wands gained a wider following in the British Isles. Before that your average witch or wizard used what we call now wandless magic for little things, staves for the more difficult magic, and written runes for everything else.’

‘Everything else?’ asked Ginny.

‘Take a fireplace as an example. Today we would use a simple incendio to start a fire, and you don’t even need wood. But they didn’t have the charm that long ago, which is where runes come in. The rune _Cen_ , from the futhorc rune set, properly inscribed on a runestone and soundly mounted in a fireplace will produce the same effect. Incendio is easier, which is part of the reason wand-magic replaced rune-magic in the first place.’

Harry shifted, remembering something that had been niggling at him since his very first visit to Diagon Alley. ‘Doesn’t Ollivander’s say “Fine Wandmakers Since 382 BC” over the door?’

‘It does. The Ollivanders are one of the oldest families in Britain. I reckon they were making staves that far back, though. We’ve talked about different types of magic, and why our ancestors used runic magic, so lets look at the language itself. Now, with the Germanic runic scripts, the most “modern” used in the British Isles was something called the Futhorc rune set. The Anglo-Saxons brought it with them when they moved in after the Romans left. Like the older Futhark, it takes its name from the first six letters of the rune sets, But rather than using it to spell words – though you can do that if you like – we, as the ancient wizards did, use the deeper meaning of each rune to perform magical tasks.’

‘Deeper meanings?’

‘Well, let’s take Ginny’s full name: Ginevra. None of that,’ he said with a grin when the girl in question scowled. Even Harry knew that Ginny hated her full name. ‘Now, Ginevra is a Welsh word that means, “fair”. That’s a more modern example, but In terms of runes we’ll look at the rune _Haegl_ , which is the ninth rune in the Futhorc runeset. In Old English – the Anglo-Saxon language – _Haegl_ means hail, or frost. It’s a great rune for slowing things down. _Haegl_ is similar but different to _Is_ , the eleventh rune. _Is_ means ice, and is the opposite of the fire rune, _Cen_ , the sixth rune. It’s more complicated than I’m making it sound, of course.’

It didn’t sound uncomplicated at all to Harry, who was reminded forcibly of his first few weeks at Hogwarts. There was definitely a lot more to magic than waving your wand and saying a few funny words.

‘The best place for you to start with an understanding of the Germanic runic scripts are the different Rune Poems. Each rune poem is made up of stanzas, each corresponding to a rune, and each is a description of their meaning. Going back to our example rune, Haegl, the stanza of the poem that corresponds with it is: “Hail is the whitest of grain; it is whirled from the vault of heaven, and is tossed about by gusts of wind, and then it melts into water”. It’s more poetic in the original Old English,’ he said, at their slightly blank faces.

‘What does it sound like in Old English?’ asked Harry. It can’t have sounded that much different, after all. Old English had English in the name!

‘Hægl byþ hwitust corna; hwyrft hit of heofones lyfte, wealcaþ hit windes scura; weorþeþ hit to wætere syððan,’ said Bill.

Old English, it turned out, sounded very little like the modern English. It was almost a musical language, lilting in parts, and there were odd words that Harry could almost recognise. Bill was right, it did sound more poetic spoken this way. ‘I’d like to learn Old English,’ he said absently, still lost in the sound of the language. It would be nice to speak another language, thought Harry. It would be exciting to be able to speak Old English, especially as all he knew was boring old English.

‘I was planning on getting you each a few books to get you started, ones that will give you a good grounding in what you’ll cover in the first year of Ancient Runes at Hogwarts. They aren’t the basic rune dictionary that was the assigned textbook, but then they aren’t meant to be. I can easily throw in a couple of books on learning Anglo-Saxon.

‘Speaking of getting you books,’ Bill said as he stood up and stretched, his long arms reaching for the clouds, ‘I had better leave now if I want to be done at Flourish & Blott’s any time soon. You’ll need the books for tomorrow.’

Harry and Ginny took the cue for what it was and quickly shut their notebooks. It felt like it had been a long day indeed, but a good one. They were learning new things, interesting things, and while he felt stuffy from too much thinking it felt like a good one.

Harry was content.


End file.
